


Toward the Lie

by Septembers_coda



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Amnesia, Angst, Angst and Humor, Bad Cooking, Brotherly Love, Dreams, Dysfunctional Relationships, Flashbacks, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Memories, Near Death Experiences, Season/Series 09, Teenagers, Wee!chesters, teen!chesters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-30
Updated: 2014-01-30
Packaged: 2018-01-10 15:01:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1161078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Septembers_coda/pseuds/Septembers_coda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What will Sam remember of his life, when memory dissolves in the line between life and death? And what does he really know, if he were to turn to the truth, about what Dean will do to bring him back? Takes place within the timeline of episode 9.01.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Toward the Lie

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Supernatural Reverse Bang challenge on LJ. Don't miss M14Mouse's [amazing art](http://m14mouse.livejournal.com/87189.html) that inspired and goes with this fic.

Sam was trying to put things back together. It seemed he always had been. They always came apart again, either violently, in an explosion of black blood or a crash of shrieking, sparking, bending metal, or slowly, words dissolving, time eroding, fog obscuring, until even the few the pieces he could find didn’t fit together anymore.

He’d gotten used to being bigger than almost everyone, conscious of how much space he took up in the world, but he remembered being very small. Anyone could just pick him up and carry him wherever they pleased, and they did. They left him places where people came to talk to him—people no one else could see. Pastor Jim left him by himself in the sandbox at Sunday school, and didn’t see the little blonde girl who joined him.

“Hi, Sam,” she said, sitting down next to him with a blue bucket and scooping some sand into it.

“Hi,” he said happily. He almost never had anyone to play with. Dean only liked big kid things, and there were other big kids around at Pastor Jim’s, so Sam wouldn’t see him until dinner probably. “Are you gonna build a castle?” he asked the girl. Sam didn’t really know what a castle was, but that had been Pastor Jim’s suggestion, so he was going with it.

“No. I’m gonna make Heaven,” she said, busily moving some sand with her plastic trowel. “Want to see it?”

Sam was instantly suspicious. She sounded more like a grown-up than a little girl his age, and in his experience, grown-ups were not often trustworthy. “Why?” he said.

“I like Heaven,” she said simply, and Sam gasped as her hands glowed against the sand, turning it shiny and blue-white. “You might like it, too.” 

“My mom is there,” Sam said gravely.

She was painting with the blue-white stuff—Sam didn’t think it was sand anymore—and it started to look like a window, a TV screen almost, shapes floating in it.

“Yes, she is,” said the little girl, and she looked at him, sort of like grownups—not his dad; his dad wouldn’t look at him at all—always looked at him whenever his mom came up, but sort of different, too. Different because Sam really _believed_ she was sad. 

The window became crystal clear suddenly, the little girl sort of melted around it, and a pretty blonde woman with the saddest face Sam had ever seen reached through it. “Sam,” she said, holding out her arms, and her voice was so sad that Sam started to cry, and couldn’t stop. He reached back for her, and the light felt hot around him for a moment, and he heard Dean’s voice from far away: “Sam! Sammy! What’s wrong? Who were you talking to?”

Dean couldn’t see Heaven, or the light. Dean was still too little, and Sam was getting too big, but Dean picked him up nonetheless and carried him, slowly and awkwardly, into the church. 

Sam cried and cried all afternoon, but never told Dean why. 

~ * * * ~

Dean stared down at the broken form of his brother. The sight reflected his failure back at him like a hundred funhouse mirrors, ugly and distorted, but undeniable. Lying shattered in that bed was everything he had ever strived for, wished for, given his life for. Everything he loved, destroyed.

He was so tired. It was Sam who was sick, coughing up his life over the past weeks, burning away his existence with dogged determination, but it seemed to be Dean who felt it all. He felt like every inch of him was road rash, like all the hangovers he’d ever had were body-slamming each other in a fight for supremacy inside his skull. He thought he could easily lie down to sleep and never wake up, but his body was as stubbornly healthy as ever. He could run for miles. He could jump fences, blithely pick locks, pound the Impala’s twisted frame back into shape, go 10 rounds with a rugaru, and still hit every target in the black at the shooting range. He could haul Sam’s giant ass around whenever he was shot, stabbed, beaten, bitten, cursed, sick, unconscious, or otherwise ass-kicked. He always could. There was something almost frighteningly strong in him that couldn’t give up, would never give up, even if Dean sometimes wished it would.

As he looked at his brother’s ashen pallor, the bruised-looking skin under his eyes and the sickly mottling on his hands and arms, Dean wondered if what he had done—anything he had ever done—was right. Sam was dying. He knew it. Who knew death better than he? Whether it was his old frenemy Death or just the regular, everyday kind—everyday for a Winchester, anyway—Dean knew this song. He could tap the beat in his sleep and recite the lyrics backwards. It was his lullaby and his dirge.

Maybe it was time to stop fighting. He remembered Tessa’s words when she tried to convince him his time had come, when he tried to explain why he couldn’t go. _You're not the first soldier I've plucked from the field. They all feel the same. They can't leave. Victory hangs in the balance. But they're wrong. The battle goes on without them._

Dean wanted it to go on without him. But not without Sam. How could he, if there was anything at all, anything on this Earth or beyond it, that he could do to save him? It had always been so, but now Dean wondered: should it be?

Sam had tried, again, to give his life to save the world. Dean had stopped him. Now Sam was dying anyway, and Dean had never felt so helpless. What if he had let Sam close the gates of hell? What if Sam were in Heaven right now, and all the monsters were gone from the earth, and there was no one left for Dean to save?

Dean hunched forward and touched his brother’s shoulder, said his name quietly. Sam, slack and unmoving, did not respond. He was far, far beyond Dean’s reach. 

Dean looked at his brother’s body, too big for the narrow hospital bed, yet impossibly frail. He watched the machine force breath into it, not sure that Sam was even in there, and as he watched, he saw the angels fall. He embraced Sam and pulled him back from closing the gates. He kissed the demon and sealed the deal. He felt the hellhounds tear his flesh. He fell into perdition, felt the blazing torments of hell without ever having heard the name of Castiel, without any thought at all that salvation would ever come. 

He found himself on his knees in the hospital chapel as he remembered it all, every moment, and knew that he would do it all again, would be tortured for 30 years and die a thousand times, and make every wrong decision that he had ever made that led to suffering and death, for himself and countless others. 

He would take it all into himself again that very moment, if he could only bring Sam home.

“Screw it. OK, listen up. This goes out to any angel with their ears on. This is Dean Winchester, and I need your help…”

~ * * * ~

Sam strode up to the stranger in the white hallway. He barely noticed the bedraggled, broken-feathered wings that straggled down the guy’s back. Here, it didn’t seem to matter.

“Hey,” he said, tapping his shoulder. “You’re not supposed to be here. I don’t think.”

“Neither are you,” said the angel.

“What do you mean? This is my… place. I’m the only one who’s supposed to be here.”

“I am here by your invitation, Sam. To save you.”

“Do I need saving?”

The angel looked back at Sam with his own face, wearing a small, sad smile. He touched his forehead and, as Sam swirled away, said, “Always.”

~ * * * ~

Sam ran home (home for now, anyway) from school with a giant grin on his face. His Junior Science Champion award—first place!—was safely stowed in the backpack he’d scrounged from the church basement they’d stayed in at the last town. Maybe when Dad saw it, saw how well Sam could do in school if he could only stay in the same place for a few weeks, he would let them stay put for a while. Long enough for Sam to bring home an all-As report card, maybe. Then Dad might have a reason to stay home with them more often. Maybe they could go to the amusement park Sam had seen on their way into town, with the giant Ferris wheel that went higher than Sam had ever been… and maybe Sam was tall enough to ride it now. Maybe Dad would cook dinner instead of bringing home convenience store hotdogs or letting him and Dean fend for themselves with canned food. Maybe he’d actually read Sam’s favorite book that Sam had given him, that Sam wanted to talk to him about, instead of saying he would and then leaving it in the glove box of the Impala without ever turning the first page.

Maybe—

Sam slowed to a walk as he reached the top of the stairs outside their motel room. He heard a hoarse, shouted curse and the door burst open. Dean came out, grim-faced, dragging a duffel bag that was almost too heavy for him to lift. He gave Sam a look, one of those looks that told him everything he needed to know, softening a little to sadness as he brushed shoulders with Sam on his way down the stairs.

Dad emerged a moment later, his left arm in a sling, scratching at a line of fresh stitches along his jaw. Dean had not finished them well, Sam noticed. The ends would irritate Dad’s face. Sam would get the little scissors from the kit, later, and trim them for him.

Dad didn’t seem to notice Sam until he had passed him. He turned back at the first landing, not looking at him, just pausing to speak.

“Time to go, son,” he said. “Get your things.”

Sam went into the room, set down his backpack, and spotted his small, battered suitcase. He stuffed a stray pair of socks into it. That was all. 

He picked up the suitcase and glanced around the room. Slowly, he turned for the door. He started to pick up his backpack, with his schoolbooks and award inside, but left it crumpled by the door that shut behind him. It was too much to carry.

~ * * * ~

Sam felt the tube in his nose and the needle in his arm. He felt the muffled, deathly air of the hospital, the sad thinness of the hospital gown, the scratchy blanket. He felt the bruised ache of being in his body, the feeling of everyday, which he’d hoped so painfully to never feel again. His heart pounded hard and slow. Each beat hurt his chest, like an angry fist punching him from the inside. He wished it would stop, wished his lungs would stop insisting on sucking in the sharp air that felt like powdered glass perforating his insides.

He knew that this was what living was. This was being born. This was lying in his crib, demon blood dripping into his mouth, his mother burning on the ceiling. This was his brother, carrying him through the smoke. This was the broken sound of his father’s voice.

This was the laughter of children who all knew each other, who relaxed into play with each other like the steps of a dance, and the dance stopped when Sam tried to join. This was Sam, always new, always a stranger, always strange. This was Sam, fighting, running as hard as he could, always in a circle, back home to no home.

He heard a voice calling him back, forcing him into the bruise, into the bloody cough and the brokenness. This was Dean, taking his bullet, stitching him up, grabbing his arm and dragging him back from the edge, again and again and again. This was Dean, diving in after him when he couldn’t catch him before he jumped. This was Dean, selling his soul to drag Sam back. This was Dean, laughing and making jokes as he brushed his teeth on a thousand mornings of the day he would die.

This was Dean, never, ever, ever letting him go.

~ * * * ~

Sam almost rolled off his bunk bed when he woke up. Dean was _singing._ Sam was about to run out to the kitchen to see what was wrong, then he heard the telltale sounds (and smelled the smells) of Dean trying to cook. Hence the singing. Nothing pleased Dean more these days than ruining a classic rock tune while he ruined some foodstuffs. Sam strained to recognize this one; he thought it might be “Juke Box Hero”. He doubted he would have as much luck recognizing the food. He’d better hurry out there before Dean burned the cabin down.

Dad had gone on an extended hunt that summer and rented this cabin for them while he was gone. Dean had begged to go with him, but Dad said it was too dangerous, and that he needed Dean to look after Sammy. Both boys had bristled with resentment at this, but then they had found they liked having a cabin to themselves. Bobby had come by to stay for a couple of days, but had decided the boys were old enough to take care of themselves now, and said just to call if they needed anything. So far everything was fine, except the food.

It would’ve been OK, if only Dean had stuck to the basics or let them eat out of cans, like they usually did with Dad. But no. So far, Dean had served up a soggy yet scorched heap of something he called French toast, a sickly sweet, vaguely rancid-tasting mash of “pancakes”, and the most weirdly greasy scrambled eggs Sam had ever tasted—rubbery and swimming in some kind of unidentifiable oil. At least he had recognized those, and at least Dean was currently obsessed only with breakfast. 

Sam had tried to salvage the other meals of the day, but to his own confusion, he had found he was not a better cook than Dean. If anything, if he tried to do something fancier than heat up a can of beans, he was worse. Dean still laughed about the stew he had tried to make when they first got here. It had smelled so bad that Sam had had to take it a good fifty yards from the cabin and leave it in some bushes, where it had attracted a horde of weird insects. He had to throw away the pan he’d made it in, too.

Upon reflection, he decided that he should’ve cooked it on a lower temperature for longer, instead of getting impatient for it to be done and turning it up all the way. He also probably shouldn’t have substituted that can of tomato paste for the fresh tomatoes the recipe had called for. The recipe hadn’t been entirely legible; it was from a magazine clipping Sam had found in the back of the cabin’s kitchen cupboard. Maybe the corn syrup (also left behind by other residents of the cabin) instead of corn starch wasn’t a good idea either; Sam couldn’t be sure since he didn’t know what corn starch was. Anyway, he didn’t think Dean should get to keep laughing at him about it; it wasn’t that much worse than his pancakes had been.

As he rounded the corner to the kitchen, Dean’s singing suddenly stopped, right in the middle of “stars in his eyes.” Sam hurried into the room, worried by the sudden silence, in time to hear Dean shout “WHOA!” and leap back from a sudden bloom of flames on the stove.

“Shit, shit, shit!” Dean shouted, looking around the kitchen in a panic for a way to stop the fire. He grabbed a nearby mixing bowl and started to fill it with water, but Sam, recognizing that this was a grease fire, knew this wouldn’t help. He strode forward calmly, grabbed a pan lid, and clapped it over the worst part of the fire. A few flames still licked around the edges. 

“Don’t!” he said firmly to Dean, who moved to throw the mixing bowl of water on the flames. Sam grabbed the old, filthy “Kiss the Cook” apron from its hook on the wall by the stove and threw it over the stove, holding the edges down to smother the flames.

Dean coughed into the silence a moment later. The kitchen was full of greasy smoke. Without comment, Sam walked to the window and slid it open. Dean fanned at the smoke with a dish towel.

Sam noticed that Dean’s face was red, and his eyebrows were… significantly diminished. He turned away, trying to hide his smirk. Dean looked at him sharply. His lips twitched.

Dean peeled the scorched apron off the stove and lifted the pan lid carefully with the dish towel. He raised one denuded eyebrow at Sam and gestured to the smoking pool of grease around a mass of dark brown shreds, crusted with charcoal.

“Hash browns, Sammy?”

~ * * * ~

Sam stirred to consciousness gradually, the low rumble of the Impala and the swish of pavement below a familiar song, singing him awake. He didn’t know how he’d gotten here. He dimly remembered crouching in the Impala’s shelter, watching the angels fall.

Slightly clearer were the slivers of the dream he’d just been having—that summer in the cabin, just after he’d turned eleven. He smiled. He had forgotten it, forgotten that Dean had tried to make a home for himself, for both of them, even then. Weird that what was technically a disaster had cemented itself in his mind as a great memory. Maybe because it hadn’t involved ghosts, monsters, or the end of the world. It was just the kind of disaster a _normal_ person might experience—a story he could tell without horrifying anyone. A memory that encapsulated Dean—not as a hunter, not even as his protector. Just as his brother. 

He glanced over at the driver’s seat. Dean was gripping the wheel with his left arm stiffly at ten o’clock. His face was carefully neutral as he squinted ahead in the darkness. It was his tense, anxious driving pose. Sam wondered how Dean would feel if he knew he could tell exactly what Dean was feeling, and half of what he was thinking, simply by the way he drove. Sam had a mental catalogue of at least 25 distinct Dean Driving Poses filed away in his mind. It was harder to talk to him when he wasn’t driving. Not that it was ever easy.

He stopped assessing Dean for the moment, and turned to assessing himself. There was something wrong—hardly alarming; there always was, and after all, last he recalled, he was dying.

Not anymore. That was what was wrong.

He felt… a barrier in himself. It was familiar—not unlike the wall Death had put up between him and his memories of Lucifer’s cage. He had learned not to scratch it, but he felt at it tentatively. As he did so, Dean seemed to sense it, and glanced sharply at him.

“Where are we?”

“Whoa. Sam?” Dean said, and Sam felt it. The wall. It was there—strong and impenetrable, the top too high to see. 

Sam remembered. He was going to save the world. He was finally going to be redeemed, to Dean above all, to himself, his mother, Jess, his father, Bobby, and everyone he had ever loved who died—many of them because of him.

Maybe all of them because of him.

Dean had stopped him. His words had called Sam back. Only for this would he have paused on the edge. He had the courage. He had the will to sacrifice. It was in him, and always had been. Since he had been old enough to speak, he remembered flying down this road, in the dead of night in his dreams, in the Impala next to Dean, in the flow of blood from Ruby’s veins, in every blow he delivered and every shot he fired, in every mile between him and Stanford, in every moment of love dying inside him.

And now, love reawakened in him, screaming through him like blood to starved tissues. So much pain, and so much life. The love he remembered, from being carried through flames, to being picked up out of the sandbox, getting stitched up in crappy hotel rooms and being found so many, many times when he was lost.

Dean was speaking to him. He answered without thinking much about what he was saying. The words were hazy, as Sam returned, as he grounded himself back in this world. One thing was clear, though. Dean was lying.

Sam knew why. It was for the same reason as always: to save him, to protect him. The secret was glaringly bright in Dean. He wanted Sam to see it, to take it away from him, to make the lie impossible. He threaded it through with truth to make it go down easier: the only truth that mattered.

“I knew you’d pull through. I meant what I said at the church. You’re capable of anything, Sam. And hell if you didn’t prove me right.”

Sam looked inside one last time, at a deep ocean of understanding, vaster than anything he’d ever suspected he knew. Its waves tossed restlessly, and he turned from it, toward the lie. Toward the love that would never leave him.

“Good. ‘Cause we got work to do.”

~The End~


End file.
